Tuesday, May 29, 2007

High rolling holy rollers with a big bank roll

David Seaton's News Links Part of the charm of the United States is all the strange and weird things that happen all the time.

Lenin used to ask, when asked about "freedom": "Freedom? Freedom for whom? Freedom to do what?" This creationist museum might be the answer.

One of the essential roots of American culture from the earliest days has been religious nonconformity and even religious manias. This article from the Guardian fits in with that.

What distinguishes today's holy rollers is the money they are finding to express themselves with. Traditionally these people, by definition uneducated refugees from a Flannery O'Connor short story, have always been dirt poor and outside the system. The $27m that this creationist museum cost is the real novelty here. Where is all the dough coming from for this "know-nothing Disneyland"? DS

World's first creationist museum opens in Kentucky - Guardian

Abstract: The world's first creationist museum, which tells visitors the Earth is only about 6,000 years old, has opened its doors in the American midwest. The Creation Museum claims dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex lived alongside ancient civilisations but were strictly vegetarian before the Fall of Man and that the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood. Some 4,000 people visited the Kentucky museum on its first day yesterday while demonstrators protested outside and a plane towing a banner reading "Thou shalt not lie" circled overhead. Critics say the $27m (£14m) centre, whose motto is "Prepare to believe!", will be the first museum in the world whose exhibits are almost entirely fake. It is seeking to convince visitors of the truth of its belief in the account of the world's creation in the book of Genesis through a mixture of animatronic models and tableaux.(...) Some exhibits show dinosaurs aboard Noah's ark and assert that all animals were vegetarians until Adam committed the first sin in the garden of Eden. When Mr Marsh was asked to explain the existence of fossilised remains of man's ancestors, he replied: "There are no such things. "Humans are basically as you see them today. Those skeletons they've found, what's the word? They could have been deformed, diseased or something. "I've seen people like that running round the streets of New York." READ IT ALL